The lure of “gold in them thar hills” of California was an enticement like no other, for roughly two hundred thousand men in the mid 19th Century. Many arrived by the land route. Most entered California by ship and disembarked in San Francisco. Hundreds and hundreds of sailing ships, requiring large crews, entered the harbor with Argonauts bound for the gold fields.
Sailors yearned to seek gold like the passengers on the ships they sailed. Consequently, the most intense labor shortage in San Francisco was filling the ship’s rosters with sailors for departing voyages.
I have seen pictures of San Francisco in 1850 displaying the hundreds of ships languishing in the bay for lack of a crew. Most of them never moved, except to be made into buildings ( see my Niantic blog) or salvaged for their parts.
Some ships obtained sailors, who facilitated departures from San Francisco. The ingenuity of humans may be best demonstrated by the method used to recruit sailors to man departing ships from San Francisco, in those days. Eventually the process became know as “Shanghaiing”.
Sea weary sailors upon arrival to San Francisco made a fast trip to the nearest saloon for strong drink and entertainment. Their next endeavor was to find a place to sleep off the excesses. Unscrupulous saloon keeps and flop house proprietors assisted boarding masters whose job entailed filling crews by whatever means necessary. The necessary means usually involved rendering the sailor unconscious before whisking him off to an awaiting ship prepared to sail.
Not only sailors fell victim to this sculduggery. Anyone visiting the wharves and the bad part of town known as Sydney Town (see my blog Sydney Ducks) was fair game. Kirkland family legend has it that my great grandfather was Shanghaied and spent three years at sea before he found a ship returning to San Francisco. Some of the most impressive stories that have withstood the passage of time, in my family’s lore, were his sailing adventures
So, the practice of kidnapping crew members was surprisingly common. Some boarding masters earned as much as $9,500 per annum. Today that would be roughly $250,000! As they say, dirty work can be financially rewarding.